Staff Pick
Somewhere between the edge of sleep and wakefulness, After Dark resides. Told in one evening, with chapters indicated by time-stamps, Murakami's tale of both somnambulists and insomniacs is still, stark, and seductive. With a delicious bonus "thriller-ish" story thread, After Dark is a little slice of Murakami heaven. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
A short, sleek novel of encounters set in the witching hours of Tokyo between midnight and dawn, and every bit as gripping as Haruki Murakami's masterworks
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and
Kafka on the Shore.
At its center are two sisters: Yuri, a fashion model sleeping her way into oblivion; and Mari, a young student soon led from solitary reading at an anonymous Denny's into lives radically alien to her own: those of a jazz trombonist who claims they've met before; a burly female love hotel manager and her maidstaff; and a Chinese prostitute savagely brutalized by a businessman. These night people are haunted by secrets and needs that draw them together more powerfully than the differing circumstances that might keep them apart, and it soon becomes clear that Yuri's slumber mysteriously tied to the businessman plagued by the mark of his crime will either restore or annihilate her.
After Dark moves from mesmerizing drama to metaphysical speculation, interweaving time and space as well as memory and perspective into a seamless exploration of human agency the interplay between self-expression and understanding, between the power of observation and the scope of compassion and love. Murakami's trademark humor, psychological insight, and grasp of spirit and morality are here distilled with an extraordinary, harmonious mastery.
Review
"[A] pellucid dramatization of disconnection, alienation, the hunger for human contact and the strategies by which we all manage to 'make it through the night.' A seductive and gratifying intellectual and romantic adventure." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
Review
"Each character is unique in his or her form of loneliness, yet each possesses a capacity for momentary empathy that is both sweet and heartbreaking. Murakami's genius, on both large and small canvases, is to create worlds both utterly alien and disconcertingly familiar." Booklist
Review
"[A] bittersweet novel that will satisfy the most demanding literary taste....Murakami's fiction reminds us the world is broad, that myths are universal and that while we sleep, the world out there is moving in mysterious and unpredictable ways." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"After Dark doesn't always hit the high notes, but it is, like Takahashi's music, straight-ahead jazz with a quiet grace as likely to be overlooked as a snare shuffle." Los Angeles Times
Review
"This strange, mesmerizing, spell-binding, voyeuristic novel is impossible to put down." Providence Journal
Review
"After Dark is Murakami condensed. It's a very good place to become familiar with some of his interests (music) and themes (loneliness) in a truncated version. Nevertheless, do not neglect his rich, dense metaphysical novels." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Review
"To readers unfamiliar with Murakami, After Dark may be the perfect place to start. All of the touchstones are there, the mix of physical and metaphysical, the blending of cultures, the imaginative story lines that are impossible to predict." Denver Post
Review
"In Murakami's talented hands, After Dark emerges a tightly controlled narrative, carefully constructed in both time and place....We stay alert to exact detail on each page, within every frame. The result is palpable and enthralling." Cleveland Plain Dealer
Review
"Like a latter-day Walker Percy or Albert Camus, Murakami raises questions about perception and existence, though he feels no compunction to propose answers." Christian Science Monitor
Review
"After Dark is not Murakami's best work there's an intrusive narrator spoon-feeding meaning you'd prefer to find on your own. But Murakami's humor and pop culture references remain, as do the underlying questions about the human condition....If only Nietzsche and Sartre had made questioning the meaninglessness of existence so fun." Anya Yurchyshyn, Esquire (read the entire Esquire review)
Synopsis
With his trademark humor and psychological insight, Murakami's power of observation plays out in this sleek novel of encounters set in Tokyo during the witching hours between midnight and dawn.
About the Author
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into thirty-eight languages. The most recent of his many honors is the Franz Kafka Prize.